Truly Yours

Chapter Two

Twenty years later, Viscount Rexford was once more in his father's library, once more wounded, confused, and in despair.

Lord Royce wished with all his heart that he could hold the boy, kiss away his hurt, make everything better with the promise of a new horse. But his little boy was a soldier, and war was not something a father could make disappear. Rex's leg might heal, the scar on his cheek might fade, but those wounds to his soul, Lord Royce feared, were something Rex would carry for the rest of his life.

At least he had come home. Too many fathers' sons had not. Timmy Burdock would not bedevil the neighborhood ever again, and Daniel, the earl's nephew, was in London, by all reports drinking himself to death, trying to accomplish what the French had not. The three had joined up, for England and for the adventure, despite their families' anguish. Timmy had gone as a common foot soldier, but the earl had bought colors for his son and nephew when he could not convince them to stay safely in England. For that matter, they had been getting into too much trouble in Town, Rex's hidden talent causing whispers of cheating and bribery and unfair advantages. Where Rex went, Daniel had to follow, as usual.

No one was about to allow the only heir to an earldom to face the enemy, so Lord Royce used his remaining influence-and a shadowy connection at the War Office called the Aide-to have them assigned to a noncombat division. The Aide was one of a handful of people who knew about the family's truth-seeing, and he saw a great need for Rex's gift. With the viscount's unique talent and his cousin Daniel's intimidating size, the two had risen through the ranks, attached to the Intelligence Service. They had become known, and widely feared by both French and British troops, as the Inquisitors, Wellesley's most valued team of interrogators. Their methods were kept blessedly hushed, but they seldom failed to provide necessary, infallibly accurate information from captured prisoners, enabling the generals to plan their strategies and protect their own forces. Lauded by the commanders, the cousins were distrusted by their fellow officers. Spies were already considered less than honorable, and whispers of torture or Dr. Mesmer's new hypnotism or outright sorcery contributed to the stigma of the fact-gathering department. The Inquisitors never had to resort to barbarous tactics, of course, but the commanders found it expeditious to fan the rumors. The other young officers were glad to have the Inquisitors' findings, but they steered clear of the cousins. Captain Lord Rexford's piercing blue gaze saw into a man's very soul, and Lieutenant Daniel Stamfield's huge hands were always clenching, as if itching to choke the life out of his next unfortunate victim.

Then Daniel had to sell out when his father passed away. Rex was grievously wounded shortly afterward, perhaps because he did not have his stalwart companion defending his back. Daniel believed that, anyway, according to his mother, and was submerging his grief and guilt in a sea of Blue Ruin.

Now Rex was home, too, for what that was worth, and for all the earl saw of him. The young man had found his own way to cope with a crippled leg, an empty future, a world of nightmarish memories. Rex could not tramp across the countryside, but he could ride endlessly, and he could sail toward the horizon, not having to speak to anyone, not having to see their pity-or their fear. His only company was an enormous mongrel he'd rescued on his wanderings, an ungainly mastiff bitch who was utterly devoted to him. Rex named her Verity, because she alone among all females never lied to him. When he rode too far or too fast, Verity sprawled across the front door of Royce Hall, waiting. When he took his boat out on days fit for neither man nor beast, the big mastiff lay on the dock, waiting. She never ate while he was gone, never barked, and never let anyone touch her. Sometimes the earl would sit beside the dog, waiting too, worrying that he might still lose his only child-not to war, but to a reckless, nameless grief.

What could a father do? The earl pulled the blanket closer around his knees. He was not old, but he was not strong either, with a stubborn, debilitating cough that came every winter, and took longer to leave with each passing spring. More than that, he was a near recluse himself, seldom leaving the Hall, rarely entertaining company. He read his law books and occasionally contributed an article to a legal journal, but he was no longer one of the highest-ranking judges in the land, not since the scandal. Now Lord Royce was a rural justice of the peace, adjudicating disputes between his neighbors: straying cows, unpaid bills, verbal contracts gone awry. Rarely, when a prisoner of the assizes courts was desperate, Lord Royce might be called on to lend his legal expertise. Other times, if a case interested him, he might do some investigating on his own, when he had the energy to visit the prisons, to see for himself if the accused were truly guilty.

He had thought Rex would help him when the boy got home. Rescuing the innocent from a harsh justice system seemed a worthy crusade for a retired young warrior, especially one who could tell in an instant when the witnesses were lying, when the prosecutors were supplying false evidence. Rex had not been interested, preferring his bone-numbing, brooding excursions.

Such solitude was not good for the lad, Lord Royce knew. How could the earl not know, having spent almost half of his own life alone? Such loneliness sapped a man's strength and sometimes even made him wish for an end to the aching sorrow. Lord Royce brushed a bit of traitorous dampness from his cheek as he remembered the empty space in his own life, the empty rooms attached to his where his countess should have slept. He quickly replaced those memories, as always, with the image of the beautiful little blue-eyed sprite who used to laugh and giggle and bounce on his lap. It was too late for him, but the earl could not let his heir, his beloved boy, dwindle into a broken, bitter old man like himself. No, he would not, not while he had breath in his body.

The earl reached for the letter on the table by his side and smoothed out the creases. Maybe this piece of paper held the answer.

This could not be happening to her.

How many hundreds of prisoners had cried out the same thing? Two or ten thousand, Amanda did not care. This simply could not be happening, not to her. God have mercy, for she had not done anything wrong!

Well, she had, if one could call stupidity a crime. And she had, indeed, argued with Sir Frederick Hawley. Of course she had; he was a bounder of the blackest sort. Amanda and her stepfather had argued frequently since her mother's death five years ago. How else was Amanda to see that the servants were paid, that his own young son and daughter were properly cared for, that their house did not fall down around their ears? Sir Frederick was a miser, a mean, dirty-tempered, dirt-in-his-pores dastard. And he was dead.

He'd been all too alive that morning when they had fought over Amanda's latest suitor. The heir to a barony was going to call to ask for her hand in marriage-and Sir Frederick said he was going to refuse, again. It was not that Amanda loved Mr. Charles Ashway, but he was a pleasant gentleman who would have made a decent husband, and a husband was her only chance of escaping Sir Frederick's clutches. At twenty-two years of age, she had long since given up on girlish dreams of finding true love and was ready to settle on a kind, caring man. She respected and admired Mr. Ashway, who seemed to offer her respect and admiration in return, two things sadly lacking since Amanda's mother had wed Sir Frederick ten years ago.

Her mother had been lonely, two years a widow.

Amanda could well understand that. She could understand, too, how her mother could feel sorry for Sir Frederick's motherless children, Edwin and Elaine. What she could not understand was how her mother could not see Sir Frederick for what he was.

Not three months after the wedding, he had dismissed Amanda's beloved governess, claiming that since his spinster sister was well educated enough to teach his own children, she would be adequate for Amanda. Amanda's nursemaid went next. She was too old, he claimed. And what need for Amanda's pony, in the city?

Then, when Sir Frederick realized that instead of his being elevated to his wife's social position, the former Lady Alissa Carville was demoted to the fringes of the polite world that he inhabited, she became nothing but a burden to him. Amanda's mother was a frail burden, moreover, too sickly for his baser needs. Worse, her widow's annuity ended at her marriage, and the bulk of her wealth was in trust for Amanda.

Sir Frederick should have looked a little harder before he leaped, too. It was a bad bargain all around, with Amanda the loser. She lost her mother to despair, having to watch her pretty parent fade into a fearful shadow that disappeared altogether after five years of drunken tirades and ungoverned rages.

Amanda vowed not to make the same mistakes, and vowed to escape Sir Frederick as soon as she was out of mourning and her stepsister was older. That was three years ago. Sir Frederick had other ideas. Having himself declared her guardian, her stepfather rejected any number of suitors, claiming they were fortune hunters or philanderers, when he actually had no intention of parting with her dowry, her trust fund, or the interest they brought.

No matter that Mr. Charles Ashway was above reproach. Sir Frederick was going to turn away his offer for Amanda's hand. Further, the baronet had shouted that fateful morning, he intended to refuse any other suitors she managed to bring up to scratch. By the time she reached five-and-twenty, he swore, he intended to see her fortune dissipated to a pittance.

"Bad investments, don't you know."

She would be a penniless spinster with no hope for a home or a family of her own. The servants, no, the whole neighborhood, could hear her opinion of that. They all saw the red mark on her cheek from where Sir Frederick had struck her, threatening worse if she went to the solicitor or the bank.

She went to Almack's that night anyway, certain to find Mr. Ashway there. Surely such a worthy gentleman as Mr. Ashway would understand Amanda's plight, would be willing to wed her in Gretna if need be, then fight in the courts for her inheritance.

Mr. Ashway turned his back on her.

She boldly placed her gloved hand on his sleeve. "But sir, we were to have this first dance, recall? We spoke of it yesterday."

Mr. Ashway looked down at her hand, then toward his mother and sisters, who sat on the sidelines of the assembly rooms. He adjusted his neckcloth, then led her toward the room set aside for refreshments.

"I take it you have spoken to my stepfather?"

Mr. Ashway swallowed his lemonade and made a grimace, whether for the insipid drink or the distasteful Sir Frederick, Amanda did not know. "You must not pay heed to whatever my stepfather said. We can circumvent his control; I know we can."

"The same way you circumvented the rules of polite society? I think not. After all, I have my sisters' reputation to consider, and my family name."

Amanda was confused. "What do you mean? What could he have said?"

Her onetime suitor put his glass back on the table. "He said he could not let a fellow gentleman marry soiled goods. Need I be more specific, madam?" He turned without offering her escort back into the ballroom, where Amanda's stepsister and Sir Frederick's sister, their chaperone, waited.

Amanda did not seek them out. She called for her wrap and went home in a hackney, too furious to think clearly beyond telling the doorman that she was ill. She had to let herself into the house, since the servants were not expecting them back until much later. She was not sure what she could do, yet she could not simply do nothing. Her good name was being destroyed, her dowry being siphoned off to her stepfather's account. Soon she would have nothing left, and less hope.

A light gleamed under Sir Frederick's library door, and she was so angry she went in to confront the fiend with this latest crime. If nothing else, she would make him see how blackening her reputation would reflect poorly on his seventeen-year-old daughter, Elaine, whom he had hopes of marrying off to a wealthy peer.

He was not in the library. The fool had left an uncovered candle burning, though. Amanda went to extinguish it, but she tripped over something that should not have been lying on the Aubusson carpet.

A gun? Had Sir Frederick become so dangerous then, or so drunk, that he was threatening the servants with loaded pistols? Suddenly realizing her own vulnerability, Amanda was glad he was not home after all. She picked the pistol up carefully in case it was loaded, to put it back in the drawer.

She screamed. What else could she do, finding Sir Frederick there behind the desk, with blood and gore and one sightless eye staring up at her? She screamed and Sir Frederick's butler came, buttoning his coat, his wig askew.

"The master always said you were no good."

Then she put down the gun.

Too late. Oh, so much too late.

The servants were shouting or crying. The Watch pushed them all aside. Elaine and her aunt rushed in. Elaine fainted, but Miss Hermione Hawley started shrieking and kept at it until the physician came, and the sheriff's men.

They dragged her off, Amanda Carville, granddaughter of an earl, hands bound, in a wagon, to a dark-paneled, crowded chamber. The room was filled with poorly dressed people and the stink of unwashed bodies. A rough-handed guard shoved her forward, her wrists still bound, to face a bewigged gentleman who never looked up from his papers. She could barely comprehend his words when he spoke to her captors, so numb was she, seeing nothing but her stepfather's face-what there was of it. She never got a chance to speak before her guard led her away. She did hold onto enough of her wits to hand the guard her earbobs, in exchange for his promise to get one message to the family's solicitor, another to an address in Grosvenor Square.

"There will be a better reward for you if you keep your word. My godmother is wealthy and generous. She will untangle this mess."

Amanda had no idea if the guard delivered her messages or simply kept her earrings. He left her in a tiny room, a closet, perhaps, without a candle or a crust of bread. The next morning a different, larger guard, this one with missing teeth, pulled her out, back onto a wagon with other manacled prisoners, all crying and shouting their innocence. Amanda was shoved into a fenced yard with scores of ragged women, women she would have tossed a coin to if she saw them on the street. They grabbed for the cape she still had on, her gold ring, the lace off her gown, her gloves, even her silk stockings.

"No," she screamed, "I did not do anything."

They laughed at her.

"' At's what we all say," one old hag told her through broken, blackened teeth as she snatched at the hairpins holding Amanda's blond hair in its fashionable topknot. "You won't be needin' these where you're goin'."

Someone tossed her a scrap of wool. The blanket was tattered, filthy, and likely infested with vermin, but Amanda huddled under it, away from the coughing, wheezing women who were fighting over her belongings or trading them to the guards for bottles of gin or chunks of cheese. She spent a night and another day there, with no food and no one to listen to her protests or pleas.

On the third day she was hauled up from her corner and taken to a hearing in front of a high bench. Someone must have received her messages, she thought thankfully, for a dignified barrister stood beside her in elegant black robes. At last someone would listen to her.

"Thank you," she began, only to be glared at and told to be silent.

"But I-"

Her own defense walked away from her. A gavel pounded and she was dragged off again. This time she was cuffed on the ear for demanding to be heard.

Dizzy, she was taken back to the prison, but pushed into a different room, a windowless cell with nothing but a straw pallet on the ground and one thin blanket.

"No, you do not understand-"

The matron slapped her. "It's you what don't understand, me fine lady. Someone paid for private lodgings, but you're agoin' to be tried for murder and then hanged afore the month is over, and that's the end of it." She smacked Amanda again for good measure, before shoving her so hard that Amanda fell to the damp, cold stone floor.

Amanda had no money, no friends, no influential connections. Sir Frederick had seen to that with his boorish behavior. The only reason she and Elaine still had vouchers to the exclusive assembly rooms was through the kindness of Amanda's titled godmother. The only reason Sir Frederick permitted them to attend was for Elaine's sake, so she could make a profitable match. Young Elaine could not help Amanda now, and heaven knew where Sir Frederick's son Edwin was, or if he considered her a murderess. Her mother's people were all deceased and her father's uncaring family lived in Yorkshire, days away from London. Too late, Amanda recalled that her godmother was in Bath taking the waters. Surely the countess's servants would send for her. Surely…

No one came the next day, or the next. Amanda was alone. No one was coming, because no one believed her innocent. She stopped counting the days by the bowls of gruel pushed through the slot at the bottom of her door; she stopped shouting when she heard keys jangle in the corridor. She stopped hoping when the cough came, and the fevers and chills.

But no, this could not be happening to her. She would not let it. She would simply… not let it.

When she was a girl, Amanda had discovered that if she curled up very small and stayed still as a mouse, sometimes no one would notice her. That's what she had done when her father lay dying after the carriage accident, when everyone was rushing about, crying. She had learned to stay in the shadows when her mother wed Sir Frederick, not letting herself hear her mother's weeping afterward, when there was nothing she could do. She got better at retreating into her own world after Lady Alissa's death, not listening to Elaine's aunt Hermione carping at her to stop daydreaming.

She could go anywhere in her mind-to a place no one could find her, no one could hurt her. So Amanda curled up there on the prison floor and dreamed of blue skies and picnics with her parents-while she waited to die.

"Oh, no, you don't. No one cheats Jack Ketch in my gaol." The warden kicked at her, and then two other prisoners held her while they poured gruel down her throat. She brought it back up, and they slapped her and punched her some more, but she did not feel the blows, did not see the tormentors; not where she was.

"What, ya think playin' the queer nabs will save you? You ain't seen no Bedlam then, have you? You'd be beggin' for the noose, you would."

They left her alone, and she crawled deeper into her own self, as far from this living hell as she could go while still living.

She did not even hear or take notice when the guards bid on who would have her first, when the warden had his day off. She only heard her father calling her back from the lake edge. "Come to Papa, poppet. Come now." She was halfway there.